Two days ago, after the latest bomb in Baghdad, I was going to post something about a report by Caroline Hawley, a two-minute video on the BBC’s website. Then I went back to get the link and found – or so I thought – that her report had been replaced by someone else’s. Forget it, then. But today I came across this post (scroll down to ‘The BBC Sunday Night News For January 18, 2004’) at Last Night’s BBC News, and it restored my confidence that Hawley’s report had really existed. It must have survived my failure to find it a second time, rather than going down some tube of oblivion at the BBC site, as seems to happen from time to time. I went back to look for it, and lo and behold, I found it (click on the ‘Watch and Listen’ video).
OK, after that long rigmarole, here’s the pitch. Caroline Hawley says at one point:
Just as the Coalition was talking of the decreasing violence over the past few weeks, the bombers have struck right at the gates of their headquarters.
She does also go on to say that most of the dead were Iraqis, but then her report concludes as follows:
The first major bomb in Baghdad this year shattered hopes that the Coalition is winning the battle against the insurgents.
So, the bombing is evidently bad news for the Coalition – as indeed it must be. But the question I’d like to pose, without pretending to any expertise in the area, is this. According to what news values, what conception of balance or objectivity, is it more important to stress the bad news for the US and the British than it is to stress the bad news (in a different sense) for the insurgents – namely, that they are people willing to kill and maim innocent Iraqis in large numbers in defiance of the recognized codes of warfare?